Tintin in the New World: A Romance

by Frederic Tuten

  In response, a young caballero, his pomaded black hair gleaming, rose from a distant table and, as if representing all present, ventured a speech in English. "Madame, your beauty would make us all rowdy, your charm and loveliness make us obedient to all your wishes, to pardon Satan should you ask."

  He suddenly sat himself down, apparently surprised by his own boldness, for his words seemed to come not so much from practiced flattery as from some urgent need, more powerful than his own reserve, to make his existence known to the woman.

  Sounds of approval, some guttural, some high-pitched, some falsetto, some bass, played through the room; some thumped their tables with spoons and forks to signal their approval of the young man's gallantry, but in one corner, a coarse remark stained the convivial air.

  Tintin saw the caballero redden, rise, and rush to the table of the offending wit, a portly man who had returned to his grapefruit unaware of the youth standing over him.

  Whatever the youth hissed to the older man was inaudible to Tintin, but the words instantly galvanized the jokester, who rose and bowed apologetically in the direction of the table that had originated the commotion.

  Clearly mollified, though flustered, the avenging cavalier returned to his seat and busied himself, his eyes downcast, with awkward and exaggerated precision, to the affair of pouring his coffee and buttering his toast.

  "A squall in a nun's thimble," mumbled Haddock, "but now me plate is glacial, and I think I'll take myself to more warming refreshments.''

  Tintin did not reply but distractedly went about wringing his napkin.

  "Yes, back to me bottle," Haddock persisted.

  But this, too, did not provoke a response, and some further moments passed before Tintin spoke.

  "Those people seem very interesting, don't you think?" whispered Tintin earnestly.

  "How so, my lad? Many such windy passengers have freighted my mess since I captained at sea. It's best to ignore 'em and leave 'em to their fussing, or they'll soon climb up your jammers and nest in your pockets."

  "Yes, I suppose. You know the traveling world, and you know its combinations, yet there are voices ... sounds that enter one's lonely cells as do no others, their very timbre, pitch, tenor, and texture so unique as to unlock one's bolted soul, the 'open sesame' of sounds lifting the stony lid of one's guarded, secret cave. Your voice, for example, Captain, charged with brine and cold seas, with the wet dust of foggy nights and cold watch, comforts me. These past minutes I've heard an unusual voice, the claiming voice of that enchanting woman.... "

  "It tells you what, me boy?

  "'That once we rose up slowly as if we did not belong to the outside world any longer — like swimmers in a shadowy dream who do not need to breathe.'"

  "Your words and thoughts lie beyond my soundings, grow more unfathomable each passing day," said Haddock, shaken. "Let's leave this place. Oh, let's go away before bad things happen."

  "Attention, Captain!" Tintin answered playfully. "Let no man jump his watch, lest it hurtle him through time's wide pipes."

  "Would you stroll with me then, lad, and guide me through these parts and ruins and take Snowy by our side, for he always quickens you to yourself, more than I, at times?"

  "Oh, yes, Captain. Let's find that dog and be on our way."

  — Chapter VI —

  [Midday. Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Snowy pause after strolling among the ruins of the ancient Inca city.]

  "I have no love for these fat stones," said Haddock, seating himself at the base of an Inca wall, "as indeed, I care not for your general ruins, your tall Greek pillars and profound Roman baths, your squat medieval towers, your bulky old hulks of olden times, they throw me into a blistering funk, these do."

  "Well, I must say, Captain, astonishing as these Inca walls are and marvel-filled as this part of the globe is, I do feel time's awasting, and I'm no closer to knowing what I was sent here for than when we left Marlinspike. But as for the ruins themselves, they serve to instruct and to edify; at least that is what I've read. Our guidebook teaches me what these stones mean and gives me news of what was and what has happened here."

  "It fills my becalmed sails to hear you speak of history; read to me, then."

  Tintin opened his book, a guide to South America, and flipped through its pages, thinking to read relevant passages to his companion, but Snowy barked his warning bark as a man approached. Tintin looked up to see a lean man in military uniform standing over him.

  "Good afternoon, Señor Tintin. I am Lieutenant Nelson dos Amantes, a sus órdenes. Excuse this interruption of your privacy, but I have been elected to ask you to join a few of us for lunch."

  — Chapter VII —

  Tintin's heart fluttered. There they were, the rowdy group of the breakfast table, now reassembled for the midday meal. All rose, save the woman, to greet the arrivals. The large, bearded man bowed; the short man clicked his heels; the third, lean and tall, merely extended his hand to no one in particular. Herr Peeperkorn, Herr Naptha, and Signor Settembrini they were, in that order. The woman languidly disposed at the table (her eyes downcast, her arms elongated on the white cloth) was Madame Chauchat, or so Tintin understood from Herr Peeperkorn's bellowed introduction.

  Whatever her name, it was she. She of the olive skin, the she to whom the brave caballero had — in the face of the world — delivered his compliments. She, whose voice purred of autumn leaves rasping across a grate, spoke.

  "It is generous of you and your companion to join us today. You are, after all, famous the world over for your reserve."

  "Shyness, madame," Tintin heard himself say, his voice far away from him.

  "Nonsense, young sir," Peeperkorn said, "there is no cause for shyness. Expanse, the fluid and natural flow of conversation, I enjoin you, are our custom here. Sit, stride a chair. Eat."

  They were, excepting the lieutenant, travelers whose paths had crossed and crossed again over the years. Madame Clavdia Chauchat, Peeperkorn explained, was his traveling companion, his indulgent comrade in life's adventures ever since they had met — where? On the Russian steppes, the coffee plantations of Java? — and had passed a tonic winter together in the Alps, where they had the pleasure of encountering Signor Settembrini and Herr Naptha, fellow sojourners on the mountain heights. Amusing and entertaining and very instructive fellows they were, too, each given to high thinking and speculation, the life of the mind, you know.

  Signor Settembrini, if he, Peeperkorn, be allowed to speak for him, edits the renowned, but of limited circulation, Review of Human Suffering, dedicated to investigating the causes of and solutions to the discontent and misery of the species; humanism and science, progress and democracy are the journal's bywords, the betterment of the human condition its aim.

  "You simplify too much," Settembrini interjected. "Our new friends here should have the opportunity to hear my case and judge for themselves the range and merits of my beliefs, which have undergone changes over the years."

  "Nothing of your simpleminded notions matter, however much you reform and revise them," Naptha said acidly.

  And this, then, was Herr Naptha. How to describe him? Peeperkorn, for the sake of his new friends, would try. Herr Naptha has been expounding for years the virtues of a society whose economic base is Communist and whose spiritual and governmental principles are Roman Catholic — Herr Naptha himself being a Jesuit on extended leave from his order.

  "Mention, too, that your Settembrini is a Freemason, and of some high degree, I suspect," Naptha said. "In any case, much has changed for me as well, since the days we spoke. I've come to different thoughts and have long since been independent of any orders, religious or otherwise."

  "Our good lieutenant here must speak for himself," Herr Peeperkorn said, continuing his introductions, "for I know very little except that he is intelligent, a military man stationed to protect these regions and this ancient site, a man bent on reform, and a man of his people, if I understand him correctly."

  "You unders
tand very well, sir," the lieutenant answered, "though I should clarify that my people are the native and the original inhabitants of these mountains and of this land you Europeans call Peru."

  "Are you, too, a reformer?" Tintin asked the woman, from whom he could not take his eyes.

  "Yes, she, too." Peeperkorn laughed. "She reforms my wallet by reducing it, though I wish she could do for my person what she does to my purse, transforming fat to lean."

  Madame Chauchat blanched and made to rise from the table.

  "No, no," Peeperkorn protested, "do not leave. Clavdia, I ask your pardon before all here. A stupid remark without a jot of substance or truth made for the sake of the joke on myself. I beg the pardon of all for my vulgar lapse."

  "I myself am not offended," Settembrini said.

  "Nor I," Naptha said, "though it is strange to find myself agreeing with the signor here."

  "Is it not for the lady to accept the apology?" Lieutenant dos Amantes asked.

  "But of course, it is!" exclaimed Tintin, slapping his forehead. "What a ninny I am not to have thought of that."

  "No harm, gentlemen," Clavdia said graciously. "But still I shall leave."

  "I ask that you remain among us here," Tintin said. "Your withdrawal would devastate the day."

  Captain Haddock fidgeted and let out a deep sigh. Snowy, who was busy sniffing the aromas of pants legs and shoes under the table, stopped for a moment and pricked his ears. He likes the lady. I'll give her a whiff and smell her out for him. Double caution's needed up here where the air's so nothing.

  "Ah! How can you refuse your cavalier," Peeperkorn said, "for his sake if not for mine?"

  "I shall stay then," Clavdia said, addressing Tintin, "if only to hear your thoughts at our little symposium."

  "Resolved! How wonderful that we are composed at table again! Joy! Total!" Peeperkorn exclaimed. "A restful and solid finale to all struggles is the table, a life ending in bounty and grace. Yes. Many would have it otherwise, burning, you know, flashing cometlike through the final years, drink perhaps, or the needle or the deep draw of the opium pipe, or all three — though I exaggerate, surely not all, too many spices in that broth to distinguish any flavor. Now, as we were saying, how I begin my day.

  "In the morning, a thick blue jug of steaming cocoa, thick slabs of buttered and marmaladed toast on a blue-rimmed stone plate, all taken while propping oneself against the bed's mountainous pillows. Sunlight, champagne pale through the window, warming the face and arms and breast, for one's nether parts are yet under the quilt; then the papers, read page by tasty page. Perhaps, too, a cut of seasoned ham, and eggs, lightly peppered atop the gelatinous frame of the yellow jell. Coffee, a mixture of — "

  "As I began to say at breakfast," Naptha interjected, "one mustn't forget that above all, Marx was a polemicist. His economic theories are hardly relevant today, as regards real life, I mean. But enough, this is all common knowledge, and besides, none of this interests me greatly any longer."

  "You are too coy, my dear friend," Settembrini said caustically. "But for the sake of Tintin and Captain Haddock, our new friends, I shall play your game and ask, Pray, what does interest you?"

  "As always, man's soul. Which is the same nearly everywhere. The seeming inequity of state or private capitalism no longer disturbs me, for exploitation and privilege have been and ever shall be the condition of any society."

  "You have changed your canzone over these years, Mr. Naptha! How long ago was it you were dreamily extolling the virtues of and the necessity for what shall we call it? — a spiritual, a transcendental communism? Yes, once you preached religion and common ownership of property, a real minestrone of ideas, indeed; the city of God run under scientific principles."

  "I do admit to a certain amount of former ideological immaturity," Naptha answered, "but one must change along with the conditions of life, though you do not seem to, spouting, as you do, the same old dishwater of universal peace and progress through the advancement of learning and reason. And you, who so dearly wish the world's good, seem not to manage very well his own welfare. I notice your trousers are still thin at the seat and frayed at the cuffs."

  By coincidence, Snowy had just arrived, at that instant, at Settembrini's pants cuffs and was inhaling the rich aroma of lint and stale bread crumbs. Settembrini looked down in fear.

  "He will have my ankle, this dog. Can't we put him out, Signor Tintin?"

  "Have no fear, this is a good hound; he smells the rodent in its lair," Naptha said.

  "Come stay beside me, Monsieur Snowy," Clavdia said. "Or take my lap for your seat if it please you."

  Snowy glanced toward Tintin for advice and, finding a nod of assent, went off to the woman, who was setting down some sugar cubes for him beside her chair.

  The world's richer for her. I'll like her till I don't.

  "We were not discussing my sartorial situation, sir," Settembrini answered. "When you are cornered in your vulnerable intellectual hole, you resort to petty argument ad hominem, but our friends here, I'm sure, discern your shabby little ploy."

  "No offense intended. Only to say that the world changes but you remain the same, while I at least, attempt to tailor myself with contemporary cloth. Shortly ago you accused me of a former dreaminess regarding the world, and I agreed. Today I know it is better to accept than to prescribe the conditions of reality. Who am I to beat the sea with chains?"

  "Shameless man!" Settembrini exclaimed. "Insane as it may have been, at least your former dream had the virtue of reform, but now you tell us that you take the world for what it is, that you accept wickedness and wrongdoing and unreason."

  "Do you mean, Señor Naptha, that you countenance the exploitation of the poor and of the workers who create the world's wealth?" asked Lieutenant dos Amantes.

  "Lieutenant, I answer you thus: 'There are classes of men in the world who bear the same relation to society at large that the wheels do to a coach and are just as indispensable. You may legislate the number of passengers, so that the coach does not groan under their weight, or you may increase the number of wheels, so that both the conveyance and the riders may progress more easily, but in whatever combination, there must always be a coach and its wheels, else there is no movement.' And since I prefer to ride rather than to be ridden on, I take appropriate measures. You, my dear lieutenant, ask only that the wheels exchange places with the passengers."

  "Dove c'è equagliànza non c'è lucro," commented Settembrini. "Which I translate, 'Where there is equality there is no profit.' Thus — "

  "Thus, nothing," Naptha blurted. "For I answer you: Nil posse creari de nihilo, 'from nothing, nothing is created.’"

  "Excuse me, gentlemen, I am losing your drift," Tintin said.

  "It's no matter," Clavdia interjected. "When men gather, except when a woman they wish to charm is present, they always prattle about money."

  "I mean," continued Tintin, letting pass Clavdia's comment, "this business of the coach and its wheels doesn't apply today because we've got airplanes."

  "At last a sensible, modern voice," Clavdia exclaimed, bestowing a smile on the young man.

  "You misrepresent me, Señor Naptha. A while ago you suggested I wish only to transform the oppressors into slaves and the slaves into masters. This is not true, as you yourself probably know."

  "And what, then, would you desire, Lieutenant?" Settembrini inquired, turning attentively to the young officer. "Things for us here are elemental. We require the elimination of the latifundia and the ownership of huge estates by absentee landlords; we must return to the communal system of our ancestors. The Indians must have their ancient lands and language returned to them; they must be self-governing, autonomous, tribal, yet ultimately connected to the whole of our culture."

  "What you would like then is a form of pre-Columbian, Inca civilization mixed with the blessings of modern technology and science," Settembrini interjected condescendingly.

  "Perhaps that," the lieutenant replied, averting hi
s eyes from the speaker.

  "In short, you propose fascism."

  "That is a specialty reserved for Italians," the lieutenant answered curtly.

  "Fascism, sir, is a generic term, applicable to all states bent on nationalism and state socialism, on a retrograde and mystical love of the folk blended with elitism and economic and political tyranny."

  The lieutenant drew his chair back abruptly and remained silent for a moment, as did the others at the table. Suddenly the officer erupted: "Names of things do not apply. Eso no significa nada, usted habla de cosas que no significan nada hoy. Estamos todavía en la garra del pasado, bajo su tiranía. Necesitamos una vida nueva, sin extranjeros, ni las ideas del mundo viejo. Todo será nuevo aquí, en el porvenir todo será nuevo."

  "Yes, of course," Peeperkorn said, "in the future all shall be new, no sadness, none. Pretty children and pretty mothers, land fertile, sunshine, ever-golden days. No ugliness, none. Neither illness nor aging, not a graying hair in the lot, but all as youths and maidens — well built, you understand, magnificent bodies all. There shall I go, where good manners and grace count for something. Let's go."

  I would like that, a place where dogs can be dogs once and for all. Dog Land: bones strewn along mossy paths, hills of silken leaves to tumble in, packs of sleek-haired bitches in furnace heat, griffons, and giant Irish wolfhounds even, who won't turn their noses up at a runt like me. Yes, my kind of place.

  "Rather ride than be ridden on!" shouted Settembrini, his mind suddenly returned to Naptha's coach metaphor. "In fact, you actually benefit from this vehicle of capitalism. Everyone knows of your wealth, however modestly you seem to apply it to your person. Your economic and spiritual determinism is only a grandiose rationale for comfort."

  "Well, why not? Only the wastrel leaves fertile fields untilled," Naptha answered. "Yes, through husbandry, patience, and care I have cultivated my well-being, a modest but steady harvest of incomes, reaped from various fertile investments: real estate, of course ... mutual funds, bonds and securities, and recently some investments with various Brazilian companies — the military keeps things stable there, you know. And there are other minor but firm commitments such as a rent-yielding apartment on the Place des Vogges, Paris."